Andrew Cooper
Dec 26, 2020    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 76x
Seeing: 6 Transparency: 7 Moon: 0%

Brilliant pale-orange, no companion noted

Captain William Henry Smyth
Apr 5, 1838    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A very delicate double star, under the Crab's mouth. A 4½, straw colour; B 15, blue, only seen by glimpses. This was discovered by H., sweep No. 457, and is situated nearly equatoreally between two distant stars: pursuant to my plan, I assumed it, from Piazzi, as 4.5 in brightness; but H., in his table of the comparative lustre of the individuals of Cancer, in the Philosophical Transactions, classes both it and γ as of the 4th magnitude, a degree in which I should rate them myself. A ray from Rigel glanced to the north-east through β Canis Minoris, and carried nearly as far again, will find it at about 2½° south-south-east of the Præsepe. A has certainly a proper motion in declination, which I am inclined to rate at 0".22 per annum; but that in RA is inappreciable by my results. Other investigators, however, value them thus:

δ    P....   RA -0".10  Dec. -0".21
    B...       +0".05       -0".24
   [Hipparcos  +0".01714    -0".22926]

δ Cancri is the southernmost of the stars called Aselli by the Romans, and ονοι by the Greeks; γ Cancri being the northern one; and they may very readily be found by their connexion with the Præsepe, which they closely follow in a line, one to the north and the other to the south. See 44 M, above. These stars form a part of the VIIIth compartment of the Lunar Zodiac. Manilius calls them Jugulæ; but the Arabians, borrowing Ptolemy's term, designated them Al-himáraïn, the two asses, whence Dupuis, despising the story about the insane Bacchus, conjures up the emblem of the tribe of Issachar : "Le Cancer," dit il, "où sont les étoiles appelées les ânes, forme l'empreinte du pavilion d'Issachar, que Jacob assimile à 1'âne." As with the Præsepe, their dimness was anciently held to be an infallible prediction of rain.

Cancer is one of the ancient 48 constellations; but as its lucida is only of the 4th magnitude, it is neither conspicuous nor brilliant, whence it was of old represented of a black colour and without eyes; but Bartschius, in his Planisphærium Stellarum, 1661, and some others of still later date, converted it to a lobster. Indeed, mythology even seems to apologize for placing so poor an asterism on the solar rail-road, by stating that ox-eyed Juno exalted the creature, for the inconsiderable service of pinching the toes of Hercules in the Lernæan marsh: whence Columella designates it Lernæus. Yet, on the whole, there is scarcely one of the signs of the zodiac that has been the subject of more attention than Cancer, nor scarcely any one better determined. For the reason we have given under Leo, the Lion and the Crab were assigned as mansions of the sun and moon; and Cancer being also famous, according to Chaldaic and Platonic philosophy, as the supposed gate by which souls descended from heaven into human bodies, it, of course, obtained favour among mythologists. But the astrologers saw nothing but its "watery triplicity," and pronounced that all men born under it, shall be short, effeminate, and sickly. The successive enumerations of its component members, as optical means have progressed, are:

    Ptolemy    . . . 13 stars  Kepler  . . . . .  17 stars
    Copernicus   . . 13        Hevelius  . . . .  29
    Tycho Brahé  . . 15        Flamsteed . . . .  83
    Chr. Clavius . . 16        Bode    . . . . . 179

Cancer, as the summer solstice, introduces the longest day in our hemisphere, and names the North Tropic; for as that "aisword beste," the Crab, walks obliquely, it is figurative of the sun's retrogression on arriving at its greatest northern declination in this sign. See α² Capricorni. It forms the fourth of the zodiacal signs, and designates one of the quadrants of the ecliptic: its name in Arabian records is simply Al-sertán the crab, from the more ancient Kapitlvos and OKTCLTTOVS. In the fine copy of Albumazar's Introductio in Astronomiam, 1489, in the Bibliotheca Lambethana, Cancer is represented as a large crayfish; and in Lubienietzki's Theatrum Cometicum, 1667, it is figured as a huge lobster, between the tail of which and Gemini is a small shrimp-like companion, designated Cancer Minor.

An ardent antiquary, in his late inquiry into the meaning of Choir Gaur, said to be the British name of Stone-henge, is anxious to prove that those vestiges are the relics of a vast astronomical machine, or sort of Orrery. Overlooking the word %opo9, he tells us that Calasius, in his Hebrew lexicon, translates " the radical chor, or cor, concha marina; which may be called Cancer, the crab- shell, from resembling more the quire of a church than any other." But why more than if it were rendered oslrea? And the nonsense is formally printed!

― A Cycle of Celestial Objects Vol II, The Bedford Catalogue, William Henry Smyth, 1844

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